Is Trump Purposefully Creating Conflict to Make His Story More Interesting?

NPR interviewed reality TV producer Tom Foreman and he had a lot to say about the way Trump is creating his own narrative and our responsibility as citizens to actively deconstruct it:

“You don’t want to get bogged down in an argument over facts when you make a reality television show. You don’t want to convey a ton of information, because people get bored or lost or change the channel — and that’s certainly not our business….You want to amplify what your viewers already believe to be true — what they know in their bones. And that means keeping the conversation at a pretty red-meat level. It’s stuff I can grasp quickly, talk about at the dinner table. I think Trump just sort of gets that….I guess on some platonic level, I too have an objection, but who cares. He’s doing it and he’s going to continue doing it. But I do think it’s sort of incumbent upon us as voters to arm ourselves and to deconstruct the narrative coming from the White House or anywhere. You have to be an informed consumer of messages. But, like, that’s on us. He’s going to tell a story. He’s really good at it and you’re not going to stop him. You’ve just got to learn to read it right.”